The present invention will now be described in the context of a presently contemplated embodiment as illustrated in the drawings. However, the appended claims should not be construed as limited to the disclosed embodiments.
The present invention is directed to a device and method for storage and dispensing of items. It is presently contemplated that one application of the present invention is in a warehouse where mail order items are stored in the devices of the present invention and dispensed to employees who pack orders for shipment to the customers. However, it is also presently contemplated that the system and method can be applied to other applications such as retail locations and others.
It can be appreciated that stock and merchandise dispensers of various configurations have been in use for years. Typically, these dispensers are constructed in a flow rack or a static rack configuration that accept shipping boxes and cartons as the dispensing reservoir.
The primary deficiencies with available storage and dispensing devices and methods are that they are costly to purchase, occupy an enormous amount of floor space, require frequent replenishing, sometimes require the use of ladders to reach merchandise, restocking interferes with the removal of merchandise from the discharge openings or the order picking process, along with creating major traffic congestion from discarded empty boxes and cartons during restocking. Other problems with conventional dispensers concern difficulty in reaching some of the merchandise on the racks and the fact that individuals removing merchandise must travel many more steps due to the enormous floor space required for conventional dispensers. Still another problem with conventional merchandise dispensers is the fact that unloading merchandise from within the main hopper for inventory purposes is very time-consuming. While in the past, people have accepted the deficiencies in these conventional merchandise dispensers, they are not suitable for efficiently dispensing high-volumes of merchandise in an efficient manner at a low cost nor is the dispensing system so designed to occupy a minimum of floor space. This prevents the owner of such a dispensing system from being able to expand to a greater number of picking stations without requiring additional floor space.
In this respect, the Self-Adjusting Volume Display and Merchandise Dispensing System, of the present invention, substantially departs from the conventional concepts and designs of available systems, and in so doing provides an apparatus primarily developed for the purpose of rapid response manual order picking not seen in available systems.